Nigel Slater's bean salad recipes

I am not sure any of us need to be cooking at this point in the year. Time to switch off and chill. If I am to be caught within six feet of a cooker, it will be in the cool of the early morning, boiling dried beans or potatoes for a salad for lunch, long before the sun comes overhead and turns my kitchen skylights into magnifying glasses. (Leave the Sunday papers on the table and you could start a small fire.) By nine o'clock, the hob is off and the bones of lunch are cooling.

Once you have spooned up pale-green flageolet beans tossed with verdant olive oil and a bunch of parsley while they were still warm, you may wonder how our national bean salad - kidney beans, sweetcorn and raw green pepper - ever came to be. It shouldn't have. That salad is a recipe filled with hate if ever there was one.

Get a bean salad right - warm, tiny beans, peppery oil, a barrowload of herbs - and you could, if you close your eyes tightly, be on a sun-dappled terraced in Tuscany. Get it wrong - tinned maroon beans, chilli powder, that wretched tinned sweetcorn, and still cold from the fridge - and you could be in a motorway service station salad bar on the M25.

The long, oval beans such as cannellini and flageolet that resemble those liqourice torpedos you used to get from the sweet shop (remember sweet shops?) are an elegant start. Like potatoes, they need dressing while they're hot. The wise will take advantage of the fact that warm starch sponges up oil or mayonnaise and becomes silky and pleasing in the mouth. Season your beans at this point, and no earlier - adding salt to the cooking water will only turn them to pebbles. If I haven't made my dressing by the time the beans are cooked, I usually drain them and shake a glug or two of oil and a twist of salt and pepper over them. They will then wait contendedly, without drying up, till I get my act together.

If it is to be a dish of beans for lunch, then we had better go to town with the rest. The most gorgeous, glistening, slow-glugging oil from a single estate will, for once, show its true colours. Too often, expensive oils are used to little effect. This, on bruschetta and warm green vegetables, is the place to show them off. Some fine vinegar - the Spanish Forum brand is nicely rounded - and handfuls, armfuls, bucketfuls of fresh herbs are a good start.

Parsley, so misunderstood, has an affinity with beans, much as it does with potatoes. Basil too. It makes them look interesting and adds a bolt of freshness to their mealy depths. You could stop here and you would still have had a good time, but if a bowl of beans, oil, vinegar and parsley sounds more penance than pleasure, you will need to go shopping. Tuna, tinned - look out for the pale and interesting Ortiz brand white variety - or a thick slice of the fresh fish lightly grilled is a choice steeped in tradition. Grilled salmon, which is not, is surprisingly good here, and looks cool and summery too. Actually, most fish are happy in a bean dish.

You cannot go wrong with fish and beans - just think of the robust delights of cod and lentils. Some squid grilled till it blackens here and there will add a change of texture and welcome smokiness. I would add lemon rather than vinegar and perhaps ditch half the parsley in favour of coriander. Suddenly things start to taste as if we are on holiday.

Meat and beans are all right if we stick to bacon and ham (or duck), though we are in danger of spending too much time at the stove. Some chopped pancetta, fried slowly so that it uses its own fat, is probably the carnivore's best bet. I wouldn't do it too early, however, despite what I said before, in case it gets a bit tough. I will do a modicum of cooking in this weather, but don't ask me to chew as well.

I think we need some bitterness here, either in the form of a leaf - rocket and watercress will both work, but the former adds a tantalising spikiness - or a chopped preserved lemon. Once hard to find, they now pop all over the place. Middle Eastern grocers often have ones the size of apricots, preserved in salt and sometimes a little oil. The point is they are bitter and salty and so add a double-edged interest.

Such salads could, if they must, be used as a side dish. It seems a waste, though - surely they have enough going for them, particularly if you add fish or pancetta. They would be fine alongside grilled aubergines (slice and salt them, then rinse, pat dry and grill before dressing immediately with olive oil and lemon or some lemon-infused oil). Why not chuck in some smoked chicken if you like it, torn from its bones and cut into thick shards, or chunks of tart goat's cheese?

To get a bit practical, these are variations on one of the few salads that benefit from being made earlier in the day - their flavour will improve and the beans become more velvety. You could make up the heart and soul of the recipes earlier, so that starch and their dressings have time to 'marry', then add the fresh leaves and quickly cooked fish or grilled meat just before you eat. That way you will be able to get the cooking out of the way before the sun is high and have a lunch that will be better, rather than worse, for being 'one I made earlier'.

Flageolet with salmon, preserved lemons and rocket

Enough for 2 as a main dish

150g dried flageolet beans

300g salmon fillet (the tail is good here)

1 tbsp white-wine vinegar

6 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

a preserved (pickled) lemon

a loosely cupped handful of coriander leaves

2 small bunches (about 100g) rocket leaves

Rinse the beans - they can be dusty - and check them over for any small stones, then soak them overnight in cold water. They will need a good five or six hours. Drain them, then tip into a deep pan of furiously boiling water, but adding no salt (it would make them tough). Let them cook for 10 minutes or so at a fierce boil - this is supposed to stop them from giving you wind later on - then turn them down to a rolling boil. I put a little olive oil and a few bay leaves in at this point but for no other real reason than it makes the kitchen smell good as they cook.

If the water gets low, add some from the kettle. The time they take is anyone's guess - much depends on the age of your beans. At this time, they are certain to be last year's harvest, so they need at least 40 minutes (mine took an hour.) New season's dried beans that appear in the autumn should be tender in 20 minutes. A tender bean squashes easily between your fingers. The best way is to taste them.

Put the salmon on a dish or grill pan and rub it lightly with oil, then cook it under an overhead grill for 10 minutes or so till the flesh is just opaque.

To make the dressing, add the vinegar to the oil in a large mixing bowl, a grind of salt and pepper (remember that the lemon will be salty), then finely chop the lemon and roughly chop the coriander leaves, and add them both to the oil and vinegar. Pull the fish from its skin in fat chunks (I think bigger pieces are more attractive in a salad), and add them to the dressing. No need to toss yet.

Drain the beans (you can get them ready early in the day and shake them in a little seasoned olive oil while they are warm), then toss them gently with the salmon and dressing. Try not to break up the fish.

Pick the rocket over, discarding anything that is not in good nick, then fold the leaves tenderly into the salad and serve in the next half hour or so, before the leaves wilt in the dressing.

Cannellini with coppa, spinach and mustard olives

Enough for 2 as a light lunch with bread

150g dried cannellini beans

for the olives

100g black olives

5 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 tbsp of red-wine vinegar

1 tbsp smooth Dijon mustard

1 tsp thyme leaves, chopped

4 handfuls of small spinach or watercress leaves

75g thinly sliced coppa or other cured meat

a loose handful of basil leaves (thick and pungent)

Cook the beans to tenderness in a large, deep pan of boiling, unsalted water. They will take from 25 minutes to one hour, and are ready when you can easily crush them between finger and thumb, but they should retain a bit of 'bite'. Drain them and toss them with the olives and their dressing, below.

While the beans are cooking, mix the olive oil, vinegar and mustard with a fork in a small bowl, then whisk in the chopped thyme and some salt and pepper. The dressing will be thick and creamy. Stone the olives, dropping each into the mustard dressing as you go. Set aside for an hour or so.

When you are ready to eat, rinse the spinach in cold water and shake it dry, removing all but the very finest stems, then put it into a large serving dish. Peel any shreds of skin from the outside of the coppa, then shred the meat into thick matchstick-width ribbons. Put them in with the spinach, separating the strips as you go. Tear the basil into small pieces, scattering them into the dish. Tip the beans, olives and dressing over, fold the ingredients gently together, then serve.